Startup India

Zomato adds 40 new cities, 80,000 restaurants in 2018, says CEO

Among the key drivers for the increase in table bookings have been festivals and big events during which large groups of people book tables.

Deepinder Goyal claimed that 10.5 million diners booked tables through Zomato in 2018.

Online food ordering and restaurant discovery platform Zomato said it expanded to 40 new cities in India with nearly 80,000 new restaurants being added to its portal in 2018.

“This growth reflects in user behaviour on Zomato as well as people are increasingly going online to make their food choices, and order food, or book a table,” Zomato’s Founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said in an official blog post.

Goyal also claimed 10.5 million diners booked tables through Zomato in 2018. The company had launched its table reservation platform in 2016.

Today, Zomato might just be the largest processor of table reservations in India, said Goyal.

Goyal said that 10.5 million bookings done in 2018 were without any discount offered on table bookings. “All these numbers are pure, organic and distribution-led traction,” he said.

Among the key drivers for the increase in table bookings have been festivals and big events during which large groups of people book tables. “For instance, this Valentine’s day, we saw 150,000 diners reserve tables which were 45% higher from New Year’s Eve,” said Goyal.

Zomato, which has over 1.4 million restaurants listed globally from 24 countries, recently pulled down more than 5,000 restaurants from its platform for non-compliance with the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) standards for hygiene.

Zomato and FSSAI had carried out audits of all the restaurants listed online and asking them for obtaining license apart from meeting other hygiene protocols.

“As a result, the number of compliant restaurants on the platform has increased by over 30,000 in the past 6 months,” the company said.

Zomato’s arch-rival Swiggy has been reportedly in talks with ride-hailing company Uber’s food delivery arm Uber Eats for a supposed edge over Zomato.

Uber Eats delivers food in over 37 cities in India whereas Swiggy to about 60,000 restaurants in at least 80 cities, Bloomberg reported.

The possible acquisition would take the total city count for Swiggy to 117 cities even as Zomato would still in lead with 150 cities in India.

Uber had earlier exited its cab booking platform from countries including China, Russia and Southeast Asia after selling it to local rival Grab.

The SoftBank-backed and among world’s most valued startups Uber is reportedly planning to go public this year. The company is currently valued at a whopping $72 billion, according to private market data platform Pitchbook Data.